We Need To Make Earthly Life A Heavenly Issue

April 22, 1990|By CHARLES BIRCH

The world is a Titanic on a collision course. One of the scientists who discovered the relationship between chlorofluorocarbons and the depletion of the ozone layer is reported to have gone home one night and told his wife: "The work is going well, but it looks like the end of the world."

There is extraordinary unanimity among ecologists as to the catastrophic effects of human activity on the life-support systems of the planet.

Their work is going well. But their predictions are dire.

A cartoon summing up the tangled opinions of non-scientists on population growth, resource depletion, environmental deterioration and world poverty reads: "Eventually we will run out of food to feed ourselves and air to breathe . . . this is something we must learn to live with!"

The brontosaurus probably said the same thing as he headed for extinction. His trouble was that he could not adapt. Similarly, our technological civilization has not adapted to the needs of survival. Unless we make it adaptable we, too, shall go the route of brontosaurus.

There is something radically wrong with the way we are living on Earth today. The sort of society we are building with the aid of science and technology has self-destructive features built into it.

The limited resources of the Earth and the capacity of the planet to cope with air and water pollution have led scientists to the "impossibility theorem," which says that the high rate of consumption and pollution by rich nations, such as America and Japan, is not possible for all the peoples of the globe.

That poses a stark problem of justice. Can those who live in the rich world morally justify a way of living that would be impossible for the rest to enjoy?

It is now widely agreed that industrialization of the whole world would be lethal to the planet. In an ecologically sustainable world, with a more just distribution of wealth, a nation would be overdeveloped when its citizens consumed resources and polluted at a greater rate than would be possible for all the peoples of the world. Yet world economic systems still operate as if injustice and poverty will cease by letting everyone, rich and poor, grow in wealth together as fast as they can.

The ecological message is clear. Our basic task is to reduce the impact of humanity on the Earth's life-support systems as rapidly as possible. The impact that each person in the rich world has is about 60 times that of a person in the poor world. It is the developed world that is creating a lethal situation for the entire world. It is the rich who dump most of the carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere. It is the rich who generate acid rain, the rich who are "strip mining" the seas of fish and draining supplies of underground water around the globe. And it is the rich who are chopping tropical forests to make cardboard to wrap around their electronics. This cannot continue - the rich must live more simply so that the poor may simply live.

Each year, man annihilates at least 1,000 species that share the planet with us. This is nothing less than a holocaust of nature. Total spiritual confusion prevails in the modern world about the relationship of humanity to nature in a technological culture. Churches and theologians, intimidated by secular culture, leave that task to others. Our way of life is tied to an anthropocentric ethic that sees the non-human world as simply the stage on which the drama of human life is performed. All other creatures have no more than instrumental value to us.

A biocentric ethic that sees in all life some intrinsic as well as instrumental value is urgently needed.

A great achievement of the En lightenment was to build a theory of human rights that made enormous advances in social justice possible. Extending the concepts of compassion, rights and justice to all living creatures, not only in theory but in the practice of a biocentric ethic, would be a great achievement for our time. Yet the advocacy of Western religious thought is most weak here, where the ache of the world is most strong.

The whole of creation cries out in agony for liberation. Can religions remain silent on this agony any longer?

Are we willing to pay the price of the redemption of the Earth in terms of a revolution in values, in lifestyles, in economic and political goals, and even in the nature of the science and technology we practice?

The stage is set. Whether the play can be performed before the theater burns down remains to be seen.

*Birch, who recently retired as Challis Professor of Biology at the University of Sydney, Australia, is a winner of the 1990 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.